Posted by Alexis Rice, Communications Director

Yesterday, I attended a speech by Vice President Al Gore speech concerning civil liberties and the threat to the Constitution. In the speech sponsored by the American Constitution Society and the Liberty Coalition, Gore discussed the dangers of unchecked executive power and called the domestic wiretap program authorized by President Bush "a threat to the very structure of our government."

Gore charged that the eavesdropping operation threatens the foundation of U.S. democracy and noted that the Bush administration acted without congressional authority and is undermining the federal court set up to authorize requests to eavesdrop on Americans. Gore explained, "what we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the president of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently."

Giving the speech on Martin Luther King Day, Gore recalled the FBI's secret surveillance of King and noted, “Dr. King was illegally wiretapped—one of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government during this period. The FBI privately called King the ‘most dangerous and effective negro leader in the country’ and vowed to ‘take him off his pedestal.’ The government even attempted to destroy his marriage and blackmail him into committing suicide. This campaign continued until Dr. King’s murder. The discovery that the FBI conducted a long-running and extensive campaign of secret electronic surveillance designed to infiltrate the inner workings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and to learn the most intimate details of Dr. King’s life, helped to convince Congress to enact restrictions on wiretapping.”

Gore noted that the result of these concerns was the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA), which “was enacted expressly to ensure that foreign intelligence surveillance would be presented to an impartial judge to verify that there is a sufficient cause for the surveillance.” Gore said when he was in Congress he voted for this law and that “for almost thirty years the system has proven a workable and valued means of according a level of protection for private citizens, while permitting foreign surveillance to continue.”
The speech was very moving and powerful. Afterwards, I was able to meet Gore and commend him on addressing these important civil liberties concerns.

View Gore's remarks (text)